The New York Times (via The Athletic) examined how Seth Makowsky uses chess to upgrade the way quarterbacks think — moving them, as the headline puts it, from checkers to chess.
The distinction is the whole idea. Checkers is reactive and one-move-deep; chess demands seeing the sequence, weighing trade-offs, and committing under a clock. Makowsky’s training pushes players from reacting to anticipating: reading the position before it fully develops and trusting a process instead of instinct alone.
The result he’s after isn’t a chess player. It’s a quarterback who makes faster, cleaner decisions when the pressure arrives — and who treats careless mistakes for what they are on the field: turnovers to drive toward zero.
Summary of New York Times’s coverage of Poison Pawn, prepared for poisonpawn.com.
Read the original at New York Times →